Summer’s here and that means ribs!

… although I’m actually a fan of eating ribs at all times of the year.  I just needed to give this post a title.

Wassup y’all?!  C Ting is back.   Sorry for the long hiatus.  I was  working quite hard (yes believe it) on a project that frankly took a lot of time and mental energy so I just didn’t have much to give back to you-food. Sorry, you-food and all you three readers of the site.  It’s been too long.  But you can thank the unemployment gods for kicking in and making sure I have ample time to to get back to basics: cooking, eating and thinking about food. You-food.net is back in effect!

Alright  the weekend before last I went to the Big Apple BBQ Festival with the intention of gorging myself on delicious BBQ from pitmasters around the country where bbq reigns supreme. Instead, I was met with ridiculous, meandering lines of people waiting for God knows how long for what were probably delicious but undoubtedly skimpy servings of bbq meat. Perhaps it was worth it and the meat was truly delicious.  I will never know because I didn’t have the patience to wait in line as the rain came pouring down.  But all the smells of sizzling, smoked meat and seeing people nosh on pulled pork, brisquet, sausages and ribs did put me in the mood to bbq some of my own ribs.  So I hight-tailed it to Chinatown, fortified myself with some tasty dumplings (I hadn’t eaten – remember, I was expecting to be filled my stomach with bbq) and went to the Chinese butchers hop where I bought myself a nice two pound rack of pork spare ribs. A couple days later, I went up to the rooftop deck of our apt building and cooked me up some ribs! And then I ate ’em.  Click on the photo below for the full story and recipe.

Eating is believing.

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Hong Kong: 5 days of mouth stuffing goodness

Once again, I must ask forgiveness for the long lag.  I am unexplectedly (over) employed so I haven’t had much time to devote to the ol’ blog.  But more on this job later when I figure out how to merge the experience of working on this medical show to food – hmm, we are what we eat?

Anyway three weeks ago, I found myself jobless and in Hong Kong.  It happened like this:  My parents and my sister and her family had long been planning on going to HK to visit my grandmother.  I’d just been back in October so I should spend the time “looking” for work.  However in a quick conversation with my mom, she told me they were planning on getting a formal family portrait while in Hong Kong and maybe I should just check for cheap tickets.  So, being the impulse buyer that I am I ended up getting a rather cheap ticket and convinced Shef to cancel her winter trip to Cali and come join the fam in HK.  So there you have it.  While it was a short trip, it was a sweet trip. In fact, it was pretty succulent and delicious.  Check out the full story/ photo essay.

Night time view of the skyline from the peak.

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Matt’s Wood Oven Pizza!

Okay maybe I should rename this site “Cooking with Matt”.   What can I say?  He’s a great cook, he makes preparing food easy and accessible and he always lets me shoot him cooking.  See that’s all you need to do to be a star on this amazing blog. Alright so we already know Matt’s the Dumpling King.  And in the last post I dubbed him The Earl of Sourdough.  Now I must give him another alias: Pizza Maestro.  Read on for the full story.

Every front yard should have one of these.

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Sourdough Baby!

Alright you all.  This post is decidedly anti “zone diet“.  Don’t get me wrong, I adore protein and delicious meat, but this post and page is all about the carbs.  Last month, I went back to the Bay for the holidays and came back to NYC bearing a very special gift.  The gift of sourdough starter bequeathed to me so generously from Matt aka Dumpling King (though now I would also dub him The Earl of Sourdough).  And since then, it’s fair to say I’ve been a little bit obsessed – obsessed with maintaining and tending the starter and baking the perfect sourdough loaf.  I’m happy to say the maintenance of the starter is going pretty well, because I’m a nurturing kind of guy.  The bread?  Well I’m still working on that.  Click on the image below for the full story behind the starter and my obsession with sourdough.

this is how much Matt loves his starter

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Happy New Year!

Happy Western Calendar New Year and Happy Lunar New Year!  It’s good to be back.  And now that I’m again part of the 7.8% of the nation’s unemployed, I’ll have more time to do more you-food stuff. Lucky you! Alright, so as usual, I wanted to get this post out earlier closer to the new year, but owing to work (don’t have to worry about that now) and that it takes me way to much time by blog standards to write these these things, I present it to you now.

In honor of 2009, I present to you now, Tamales!
(A Chinese New Year Post is in the works)

Click on the image below for the whole enchilada (get it?):

Pork Tamales: one of the best ways to welcome the New Year.

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